April 30, 2017

Why did liberals become anti-semites?

Last night I tuned in for the Turner Classic Movies showing of Exodus, the epic tale of the birth of Israel. Being a Hollywood picture, it took a clear side and that side was the Jewish one.

Once upon a time, this would have been unremarkable, but I found myself pondering how it was that liberals have completely reversed themselves on the subject of Israel and instead became the passive (and not-so-passive) purveyors of anti-semitism.

I suppose I shouldn't be shocked at this point by liberal betrayal and hypcrisy - after all, liberals have been spitting on Martin Luther King Jr.'s grave for years. Still, the desire to exploit racial division at least makes electoral sense as the Dems need to keep the black vote hostage to remain a viable national party. What gives with the Israel bashing?

I'm sure some will point to the plight of the Palestinians as the cause for this reversal, but that's never made any sense. There are three dozen Arab Muslim states. In the 1990s, the US forced the creation of a new Muslim state (Kosovo) in Europe. There are lots of Muslim homelands, but only one Jewish one.

By now it should be obvious that Arab hatred against Israel was an effort to distract their own restless and badly-governed people, giving them an external enemy to hate rather than their own greedy, cruel and incompetent leaders. That gambit has finally backfired as the Arabs are now butchering each other. Suddenly the Palestinians - once the pressing issue in the Middle East - are a footnote amidst greater events.

It's also fascinating to me to see liberal Christian groups (who have no problem with sodomy or need for traditional morality) now decide that Israel alone is deserving of punitive sanctions. The left is the new home of the "dual loyalty" smear against American Jews. It was emblematic of this shift that one of the last acts of Barack Obama's presidency was to spit in Israel's eye while airlifting pallets of cash to the murderous mullahs of Iran.

I've heard some people argue that liberalism is really just a string of isolated emotional responses rather than a systematic way of thought. The liberal moral hierarchy is dominated by the victim class. Whoever is the greatest victim gets the greatest moral authority.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, with the combined armies of Arabia directed against them, the Jews were the biggest victims and got the most sympathy.

When they won themselves a nation through hard work and peerless courage, they were no longer so admirable in liberal eyes. Now it was the turn of the Palestinians to be viewed with sympathy. The deeper into depravity the Palestinians fell, the greater the proof of the horrors visited upon them.

(Liberals famously deride the notion of free will. Criminals never choose to do wrong, they're compelled to do so by "society" or "inequality." Thus when someone commits horrible atrocities, liberals want to know the "root cause" of the action. The exception to this rule are the actions of their enemies, which are always motivated by racism, greed, sexism and pure evil.)

Anyhow, looking back on the movie (which is pretty good, but rather long for my tastes), it is fascinating to see a side of liberalism that no longer exists.